


Bruises

by urbanMystic



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Caliginous Romance | Kismesis, F/F, Female Homosexuality
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-29
Updated: 2014-12-29
Packaged: 2018-03-04 02:13:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,773
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2905469
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/urbanMystic/pseuds/urbanMystic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Everyone Lives AU: Rose and Vriska get black for each other, and everyone meddles a bit.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Bruises

**Author's Note:**

  * For [katyglyndwr](https://archiveofourown.org/users/katyglyndwr/gifts).



> I worked out a whole timeline, but here's the breakdown of where everyone is.
> 
> SHIP: John, Jade, Nepeta, Equius, Eridan, Davesprite, Jaspersprite, Nannasprite, Consorts, Denizens  
> BUBBLES: Aradia  
> METOER: Dave, Rose, Kanaya, Feferi, Sollux, Terezi, Karkat, Gamzee, Tavros, Vriska, Mayor

**Tavros: Be in the wrong place at the wrong time.**

"Hey toreadumbass, what'cha up to?"

Tavros looked up from his husktop to see Vriska hovering over him, self-satisfied and grinning with teeth to make any lusus proud. Tavros swallowed.

"Oh, uh, hey Vriska," he stuttered, closing his computer.

Leering, she put a hand in his hair. "That isn't what I asked you."

"Uhm," Tavros started to sweat. He had taken a seat cross-legged on the floor with a wall behind him, making escape nigh impossible.

"That isn't what I asked you either! Geez, Tavros, this is why I gave up on you, you know."

Where Tavros was soft, Vriska was hard. When Vriska met Tavros, he bent and bruised like a sickly tree on a rocky cliff face. Survivors both of them: Tavros because he could draw breath and hope through any beating; Vriska because she grew into the pain, taking on the threatening grimace of her arachnid mother. Here she was: a ship in a bottle that longed for the sea, a fire that longed for more air. He remained just a boy, just a beautiful small clockwork boy, and how could she resist trying to break him?

"Vriska, I know that you are expecting me to feel sadness because of that sentence," he looked to the reassuring strip of subjuggulator purple fabric on his wrist, "but what I am feeling is relief, because you are a mean person."

From the corner came a voice, low and calm, "He has you there."

Vriska looked up and over to see Rose perched in an armchair. The troll clicked her tongue, "No one asked you."

Raising an eyebrow, Rose spoke over her book, "No one asked you to come screeching into here, either, and yet here you are. What happened? Did you run out of fake money to play with?"

"What's up your waste chute, Lalonde?" Vriska took a few steps forward and cocked her hip, still grinning, "You feeling pity for this rustblood loser?"

Where Vriska was hard, Rose was firm. Dear not-so-sweet Rose who couldn't be soft easily, who dragged Kanaya through a dance whose steps only she knew in order to gain entry to her human heart: she gave Vriska the same defenses, and Vriska saw the wall to pound against more than the troll saw the treasure within. Rose didn't even hear the pounding at her sanctuary, only the buzzing of a fly.

"No," the human closed her book with a snap and set it aside, "that was you, remember?"

Vriska walked right up to her new plaything, and no one had to tell Tavros twice to hightail it out of there. He was quieter than a dustbunny caught in an odd breeze. On his way out, he saw Kanaya walking up the hall.

"Well you can have my leftovers if you'd like to stoop so low," Vriska stood right in front of Rose. Not one to back down, she stood up from her chair, leaving them chest to chest. Vriska kept digging, "Oh wait. You did."

Steel blue met ghostly lavender, and then a loud slap almost took the blueblood to the floor. Rose had a stare the could peel paint off a wall, but Vriska had been around this block before, and took the opportunity to grab short, light colored hair, and throw the human to the floor. On her way down, Rose got a hold of someone's coat, dropping them both.

 

**Kanaya: Watch it go down.**

One would figure that if two gods were going to have a scuffle, they would be ripping the fabric of creation with epic magic and awe-inspiring technique. However, fighting is a language in its own right, and this was not a conversation between two mortal enemies regarding which ideal would sustain the breath of universes. Rather, it was an outburst of two lonely and anxious young women who found each other infuriating.

It is true that the sight filled Kanaya with awe, but not for the predicted reasons. Her eyes met with the sloppy pulling of hair and scratching of nails one expected of two small boys. She saw muscles bulge as rude holds were attempted, heard breath catch and gasp and rise again in a wave, and smelled the iron of human sweat mingled with the sickening ichor of a troll's same biological function. In each frame there was clumsiness and determination, curves indistinguishable between soft hips and iron thighs, all wrapped in dual undignified orange pajama flannel.

A light went on in Kanaya's nook. She reached out as if to stop them, but the sight of fang and claw filled her chest with an equal measure of fear. Dirt kicked up from the floor caressed Rose's cheek like blush. Blood ran from Vriska's arm and painted their absurd scuffle onto exposed skin.

In the end, her fear for their safety was greater than her stupor, "Am I interrupting something?"

Vriska's heaving breath and blood-flushed face went pale suddenly. She stood up, pushing Rose away like a molding jar of grubsauce, and ran out, shouting, "Don't get any ideas, wriggler!"

The bluebood left a silence wherever she left, and in it Kanaya could not find Rose's gaze. The alien knelt down, little mother, and started inspecting what would become a bruise. Her fingers were light, as though she feared to break the very same human who had been all vinegar and spittle only a moment before.

"I can explain-"

"You don't have to. May I help you clean up?"

 

**Feferi: Decide to meddle.**

"Oh my cod, did you hear what happened?"

The sea princess had run up to her matespirit's corner of the meteor labs. Her hair bounced behind her. Her voiced bounced through Sollux's chest. He was comfortable and happy, unmoving from the entrance of his welcome lover.

"Something happened?" he asked.

Feferi plopped onto the floor beside him, "Vriska and Rose got in a fight."

"FF, Vriska is always in a fight," he quipped, still typing away at some idle code.

The heiress leaned her head on his shoulder, "Yeah, but knot like this! They were wrestling on the floor, without even using their strife decks." She giggled.

"FF, no."

"Sollux, you don't even know what I'm thinking."

"You're gonna play cupid for a couple of angry macho girls."

"And you're gonna kelp me."

Sollux turned his head to kiss the top of Feferi's head. He finally gave in and closed his computer to put his arm around her shoulder, smiling a little.

 

**Sollux: Get roped in.**

As the months had passed, each citizen had claimed a corner individually. Even with eleven trolls, carapacians, and humans staking claims there were still cavernous rooms to fill and claim as mixed common space. Cliques formed around these hubs, with one central meeting place where the original twelve trolls had been on that fateful day. Sollux had brought his husktop, ready to sit in the central hub and wait for a few hours, but lo, his quarry was there when he arrived, fooling with some old flarping manual.

Sollux didn't want to waste any more time on this than he had to.

"Hey Vriska."

"What? I'm busy, Sollux, d-"

"Yeah yeah, Irons. Fire," he interrupted the start of a long diatribe about the blueblood's imagined greatness, "Rose said you hit like a human wriggler."

Vriska rose to her full height in a flash, "What!"

He egged Serket on, "Yeah. She doesn't even have a bruise."

"Well," she grabbed her manual hastily, "good thing I don't either! I was going easy on her because she's a human, obviously."

Vriska ground her teeth and stomped off, too eager to fight Rose to have even seen through the shittiest of lies. The hacker remained stone faced in the now empty room. "Yeah whatever."

 

**Rose: Find your book.**

It was in a similar room that Rose walked in to find Feferi reading. She scanned the room, then started sifting through piles for something or other. Some part of her knew not to rise, to pick another book and ignore this issue, but it was a scab. And when the emptiness of space and almost certain death are dogging your heels for years on end, its hard not to pick at your scabs. One might even say any intense emotion would be a welcome relief.

The search intensified, and the human asked, "Have you seen my book?"

"Which one?" Feferi didn't even look up. A smile hid under her hair.

Rose wasn't looking at the prankster, in any case. "The slim, orange one with brown alternian letters on it."

"Oh?" Feferi laid her trap, "Yeah, I thought I saw Vriska with a book like that this morning."

Rose stopped looking and stood still for a moment. "I see," she said.

 

**Aradia: Make it worse.**

"Hey 'radia! I'm so glad to see you."

The Maid of Time welcomed her friend into the dream bubble with open arms. After the short hug, Feferi held up a thin orange book.

Aradia raised an eyebrow, "Really?"

"Hide this with Vriska somehow?"

Even as she asked, "Wait? Why?" Aradia was captchaloguing the book.

"I'm trying to set her and Rose up in a black way, duh."

"Girl."

"Yeah, I know." Feferi was smiling. God, she really had been raised by a horrorterror.

Aradia matched her smile and gave her friend a side hug.

"Consider it done."

 

**Dave: Walk in.**

He could sense Kanaya hiding around the next corner and heard the screaming match from down the hall, but it was the only place to get coffee. Well, what passed for coffee anyway. Dave knew Rose could be hella worked up from time to time, but this was an entirely new volume. He had seen her truly angry, cold and frightening. Like this, it was hard to be scared. She was just another bad episode of Cops or Maury.

Through the door came a muffled, "I can't believe you would stoop to petty theft. Oh wait, yes I do."

"I don't want to hear that from the town gossip." Ah, yes. Vriska's high pitched squealing.

"What?"

With a sigh, Dave walked in to what must have been a repeat of the event from two days ago. He had been holed up with the Mayor, purposefully dodging these ridiculous unknowns, letting the silence of comfort stifle the silence of what he could not put words to. His 'sister' was under Vriska, thighs intertwined, lovers save for the clothes between them and the awkward close-range punching the two were attempting.

"At least you have your clothes on," he begged them to break it up.

Vriska screeched, "I don't like her that way!" She got to her feet, fists still taut, glaring at Dave.

"Right," he spoke from behind his glasses, "The love in this room is just so overwhelming I might shed a single manly tear."

Rose pulled herself up, straightened her dress, and walked out as Dave calmly walked to the coffee machine and filled up his mug. Vriska was looking for an opening, itching for a fight, but the ironic rooftop ninja gave no opening. The troll went to sulk in the corner. Dave left.

In the hallway he saw Kanaya, flushed, biting her lip hard, inching out of her hiding spot. Dave sipped his coffee and paused.

"I don't know what's worse. My sister fighting an alien like a toddler, or you acting like its porn."

"What? I'm not."

"Whatever, man. Just break it up next time."

 

**Terezi: Help your moirail.**

"Hey Serket," she groaned. The two were enclosed in an unscrupulously large pile of scalemates, warm and languid.

Vriska kept her eyes closed and gave a small yawn. "What?"

"You should tell her."

There was a long moment. Terezi wondered if Vriska had fallen asleep.

"Yeah," the blueblood yawned again, "I know. I was just flirting!" She huffed and pinched her moirail's calf. There was a yelp, and a shuffle.

Terezi swam through the pile to face Vriska. She sneered, "Flirting looks a lot like denial, spiderbabe."

"Whatever! Hush up, dragonbreath."

The scourge sisters grinned at each other, pulling closer into a loose hug as they fell back into their light doze.

 

**Karkat: Try to explain and fail.**

Karkat's voice echoed though the halls of the meteor. It filled the room of worktables littered with projects, accompanied by the scratch of chalk. Rose raised an eyebrow to one of his trademark diagrams.

"That, Lalonde," he set down the chalk, "is why you can't hit Vriska anymore."

The seer held her face in her hand, "Asinine explanations aside, Karkat, I'm going to defend myself if she becomes aggressive with me."

"Yes, that is fine," he gestured to the individual possibilities like a professor, "but if you're going to do that, then what you need to be doing is actually trying to kill her instead of what you are currently doing, which is highly inappropriate between a human and troll." At that, Karkat looked away, blushing slightly.

Rose crossed her arms and leaned back against her own worktable, littered with knitting and half-filled journals.

She replied, "I'm not going to murder Vriska for being an abusive thief. I dislike her, but not in a murderous way. Further," the girl's voice got a touch softer, "I'm not confident that I could overpower her in a life or death situation."

 

**Gamzee: Speak the motherfucking gospel, brother.**

The familiar padding of slow, bare, sleepy feet wandered in. Karkat and Rose looked up with tiny smiles. Gamzee scratched the rats nest that passed for hair on his head and half-mumbled, "That sounds a whole lot like the kind of hate that belongs in your pumpbiscuit, sister."

Unable to make him out fully, Rose went, "Huh?"

"Well, you all up and motherfucking hate her," Gamzee spoke up, "right?"

She went with it, curious, "I think after all the bruises I've gotten, hate is an appropriate feeling."

The sleepy zealot continued, "When you see her face you just gotta let out the little miracle of your hand on her face, yeah?"

"I do feel a large urge to slap her again. That is a fact."

"Then just motherfucking go for it. Fight her all you want. Only kiss her too this time."

Rose nodded.

 

**Vriska: Get the girl. Or get gotten.**

It was completely different. The air tingled. Rose was in her room, and she heard Vriska's steps from far away. She knew now, there was no shame to enjoying the bruises. She smiled to herself and put away her knitting. The door slid open and there stood Vriska: detestable, brash, overconfident.

"Rose Lalonde, get ready, because I might just grace you with the greatest honor you could ever want."

She faced her opponent and cocked her hip, smiling, "You're taking a vow of silence on my behalf?"

There were hands on her shoulders, then the floor under her back. There was a foot on her side, then in her hands. She willed it, and the body she had come to know fell beside her. She rolled to put an elbow wherever she could reach, but met only cold floor.

"Kanaya seems to think you're perfect," the troll wiped dirt from her face, "but you can't fool me. You're scared, asshole, scared that someone is gonna figure out how fucked up you are. I'm clocking you, bitch."

'It's that kind of fight?,' Rose thought to herself, 'Fine.'

Her eyes went cold and she straddled Vriska. She had the weight advantage and reveled in it, holding down small wrists, "You're lonely. Not because no one is here, but because you can't drop the pretentious act long enough to consider anyone your equal. I feel bad for Terezi, honestly. She deserves better."

Vriska grit her teeth, no longer smiling. She had the strength advantage and rolled Rose over and into a fluid series of messy tumbles and slaps. The ladies became short of breath, grabbed legs, grabbed with legs, pulled hair, and scratched toward some odd intimacy. Rose waited for the perfect moment before striking true, her lips meeting Vriska's for a hard kiss.

There was a pause. The human looked again at her insectoid sparring partner. The air rang heavy with a connection neither could really place, a humidity of two whetstones each for the other's blades. Vriska shifted, her hands half-gripping, half-resting on Rose's hips. All her fire had found a hearth to burn in. Burn she would.

"When I'm done with you," Vriska smirked, hair messy beneath her head, "maybe you'll have half a chance, Rose."

"That's quite a lot of confidence for someone who's underneath me."

 


End file.
